Blind faith: Prison minister rejoins band

Rev. Willie Thorpe talks about preaching in prision, music and not being handicapped by being blind.
Staff video by Tom Spader

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Howell, NJ
Rev. Willie Thorpe rehearsing with his gospel group the Holy Echoes at the Jam Room in Howell. When the Rev performs this Saturday it will be the first time in two year due to undergoing chemotherapy for cancer. The group performs in churches, prisons, nursing homes, etc spreading the gospel message.
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Dressed in a black suit and wearing sunglasses, the Rev. Willie Thorpe waited for his turn to come around on the microphone Wednesday evening. His band was in a rehearsal studio off Route 9 in Howell.

When the time came, the 74-year-old folded up his four-piece walking cane, stood up and in a raspy voice delivered the lyrics to his band's version of the gospel song "Get Back, Satan."

"That song came about when I was going through some family issues. The Devil was speaking to me, he was telling me 'give up the gospel because God ain't doing anything for you,' " Thorpe, of Freehold, said. "I immediately got up and said 'Get Back, Satan.' "

Blind for most of his adult life, his weight now stripped down after a fight with a new affliction — cancer, he has been waiting two years to sing again.

"When you hear their music, the lyrics tell you how to ward off your negativity and build a relationship with God. God is in control and he has already worked some things out already," said Warren Hall, a minister at Deliverance Temple Church.

Thorpe, who is a well-respected prison minister, will reunite with his gospel band The Holy Echoes to perform at 5:30 p.m. this evening at the church, a bare-bones one-room house of worship on Prospect Avenue in Asbury Park.

"The people who come to this little church find true healing and answers," said Hall.

Hall expects people will turn out to hear the preacher's band, which he believes is an affirmation of the closeness of God and a testament to personal miracles.

"When you hear a person say he's going to beat cancer, you're hopefully optimistic. When a person say's he's going to beat it and does — you're witness to a miracle," said Hall.

Thorpe has been defying the odds for most of his life — as a blind man he worked as a technician in CentraState Hospital's darkroom, developing x-rays.

His life has inspired many.

Born on May 9, 1940 in Fort Valley, Georgia, to parents who were migrant farm workers, Thorpe's early life was spent in the fields there and in Florida. By the 1960s, his eyesight was fading.

"I didn't let it handicap me. In the South, I saw men working in the fields with no eyes, picking beans," Thorpe said. "I challenge myself all the time. I do things people don't think a blind man can do."

Thorpe first came to New Jersey in 1965 to find his wife who had left him because of his drinking.

"She told me she was going to Marlboro to live with her sister. It didn't take me 10 hours to realize I didn't want to live without her," said Thorpe. "So I went looking for her."

Nearly blind, he boarded a bus for Freehold, with no address or phone number for her. Traveling with their four kids, he found her living in a shack on top of hill on Route 520 in Marlboro.

After their reconciliation and after he quit booze, Thorpe said, he found his true calling. In 1967 he joined The Holy Echoes, a band started by the Rev. Richard Worsely Jr. in Long Branch in 1963.

A decade later he started his most important work, Compassion Ministries, preaching in prisons to inmates. By then, he was completely blind.

"He could captivate 50 to 60 inmates at a time. They were in there for murder and rape but he had their full attention," recalled Damon Garrett, an inmate at the time when he met Thorpe.

Today Garrett, 51, of Belleville is married with two kids, a chess teacher and a member of a plumber's local union. He credits Thorpe's influence with helping him to change his direction.

"He didn't know me from Adam but he allowed me to stay at his home and he helped me get a job," said Garrett. "I don't know where I'd be without him."